Black Books

My friend J. gave me to watch the old British sitcom Black Books. It's so funny it makes my knees rubbery. There are instances I have fallen off my chair and struggle to breathe between waves of laughter so painful that my stomach hurts. I have grown a six pack because of the damn series, and it's good, I guess, because there is no other way I'd ever grow a six pack. I am far more likely to grow tusks. 

I am window shopping inks for my beloved fountain pens since I came across this amazing site on how to take proper care of my babies. The majority of my writing nowadays is done on the PC, with the exception of my diary. Still nothing can replace the feeling of a fountain pen in my hand and the steady, velvety flow of ink on paper. There is absolutely no comparison with any electronic device.

It's scary and adorable how much the inside of the Black Books bookshop reminds me of my home. There is nothing resembling normal in my life, except for the fact I have a job and a house. The rest is pretty much random heaps of objects and cats, jumbled occurrences and an insane, if adorable, mom. It's OK, I don't really mind. That's how it is and there is no reason to worry about it. Things will take care of themselves, I guess, or they won't, and I'll have to take care of them. I'll cross that bridge when I get there. In the meantime, worrying is a waste of time. I have a very difficult December looming ahead, with very long work hours and a mob ahem... customers wanting to buy Christmas gifts and pralines. The fact the majority would love to lace those same pralines with poison to get rid of their relatives is not strictly relevant. ;) 

The human race is equipped with an amazing ability to go on living even after a nuclear disaster. Look at me, window shopping ink while I still can't figure out a valid reason we are inhabiting this poor, poor planet. There are nights the owner of Black Books is an avid humanitarian compared to me. Other nights, I want to take care of everyone. But still, here I am tonight looking at inks and wondering if lilac is a good colour choice and if it will still be readable in twenty years from now. As if there's any guarantee I'll still be here in twenty years from now. Heh. Humans.

Enjoy a new song by P'haan and Calliah while you're here. They are as good as pralines, maybe better. 

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The Book of Life

Assassin's Creed: Syndicate

I am still angry at you. I want to make you understand. I want to shake you and yell at you. But even if I did, you wouldn't understand. You never did understand, not even when I thought we were close, let alone now. And why should I make you understand? It's not my responsibility to make anyone understand. 

Sometimes I wish that the people who mistreated me would become aware of their mistakes and sorely regret their decisions. I would love to see them looking for me and not finding me. But this is wishful thinking. Humans are too self-involved and egotistical to realise there are things beyond their self-indulging mind games and petty interests. The sad fact of this life is that we're unappreciated by others, and they never realise their mistakes. Time passes, life moves on, and none of these people have the guts to come and apologise, or say they understood, or they are sorry. If they had the balls to admit such sentiments they wouldn't have treated us so shitty in the first place. Soon the relationship or friendship is a memory, yet another page torn off the book of Life and thrown into the fire. Humans go on, as blind and ignorant as always, life goes on, nothing changes, nothing is ever lost. Except maybe for a few days, weeks, years, lives, centuries, and it's still nothing on a cosmic scale. We're ants reproducing on a speck of dust in a vast, vast universe, and it doesn't really matter, and it never will. Evolution matters and evolution has no winners and no famous authors, no celebrities and no point. Its only point is continuation of life itself, orgiastic expression in myriads of forms and countless colours, in ways I cannot begin to perceive or imagine with my humble mind.

Everything matters. Everything is completely futile. Writing here is futile. Not writing, when I can write and so many others can't, is hubris. The planet will continue, with or without me on it, with or without my writings on it. It doesn't matter to anyone except me that I am awake instead of sleeping and writing here instead of resting. It makes no discernible difference either way.

I miss Virve. I miss her fiercely. Almost two years since her passing. And still life goes on regardless of how I feel, what I do or don't do. When I am not angry, I am sad. When I am not sad, I drag my feet from one chore to the next. And sometimes, just sometimes, I am happy without needing anything besides the fact I am alive and breathing and healthy. I see a blind person, or a drowned infant, and understand how many things I take for granted.

Won't this pain ever cease? Won't this suffering end? Does it ever end? I guess it does end, when we cross over and there are no more words. But until then, I am here and I am writing. For good or for ill, and until I can no longer write.

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Special offer: buy my conscience (while stocks last!)

Three different people have asked what to get me for my birthday, which was on the 4th. I do have a public wishlist in the links section of this blog, but since they can't seem to locate it, there you go:

Amazon Wishlist

Once there, go to 'filter and sort' (right hand side, next to the social media buttons) , and choose 'priority: high to low'. You can choose any item with the 'highest', or 'high' priority indication. Yes, the list is current, and yes, I am bribable. No idea what kind of services I can offer you in exchange, but do ask, it will be fun to hear your bizarre requests. :P And no, you don't have to buy the items off Amazon; that's just where the wishlist is located. Needless to say, if I receive a crazy cat lady starter kit I will be very pissed off. :D I already have one cat in each flavour, so don't you dare.

Other than that, if you have an approaching birthday for a person who loves vampires and darker stories, why not buy my friend's Lizbeth Gabriel's collection of short stories? She's really good, dark and unconventional. Just be warned: she does NOT belong to the Young Adult genre, where everything has a happy end, vampires are fluffy and killers are in reality misunderstood chaps who need someone to love them. She is genuinely dark, and loves to probe those uncomfortable corners of the human psyche that most writers avoid. She also has kick-ass female characters, powerful and unapologetic, and a good sense of humour. If that sounds up your alley, give her a try. 

My full review for her book: 

http://mostlyamused.blogspot.gr/2016/04/promised-review-theater-of-dusk.html

You can buy her book here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HV4584Q

Come on people, let's give a new (and authentic) voice a chance. Very soon she'll publish her second book, and she needs all the reviews and sales she can get. Here, have a kiss for your efforts:

(Psst. Lizbeth darling, hur hur hur, cackle chuckle titter giggle, you are welcome to bribe me. I know you can't send ice-cream in the post, but chocolate is most welcome. Get me the Ritter Sport Jamaica Rum that I can't find here and we're even. ;) ) 
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Old diaries

Diaries I've used from 2001 to this date. Pictures taken from two different angles to help you understand the size of my (mental) problem. :)

And yes, in those folders under the diaries there is more of my writing. You had to ask, didn't you? :)

Letters to the dead

This was part of an email I sent to my late friend on the day she died. I didn't know she was so seriously ill. She never read it and now she is not here anymore. Or maybe she is everywhere and everything, her atoms travelling the entire universe. So it's time to share that email with the world. We never talked again, but at least now I know what I have to do. I have to make sure I don't give up, like she never did, although large parts of her life were living hell.

"...I can’t for the life of me understand what I am supposed to be doing here on this planet. I am 36 and still don’t have any idea what my role should be, how to respond to any role, what it is that the world needs me for, why I am here in the first place. I do know that if I go, this world will be poorer, and I am not saying this due to any inflated sense of self-importance. From that aspect, my creations are far more important than I am. I brought them here from the dreamland, from the collective unconscious, and I filtered them through my experiences and my unique point of view. No-one else will manage to bring the same things here and express them like I do because no-one else is me. I don’t know if I am a good writer or not, but I love my ‘children’ like any parent should love theirs. Such a pity our parents were such complete failures. Maybe if I had a different childhood I wouldn’t be looking for meaning, because meaning would have been self-explanatory. A psychologist once said to my friend A. that only children from dysfunctional families look for meaning and a sense of belonging, because they never had this offered to them. A happy child feels they belong here, they have no doubts or fears or questions of that kind. I am not unhappy with my share, I do count my blessings, and I can’t change the past. It doesn’t really matter now, and I would miss the weird, quirky individual I’ve grown to be due to my fucked up childhood. But the feeling of not belonging drives me batty and gets me so very depressed. I guess we all have our demons and the better we get to know them, the better company they keep us during those long sleepless nights.

When I feel very depressed, I always dig up my older writing and read it again. Older heroes, some of them created when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, most of the story plots not valid anymore, because as I grew up I added elements and made it more and more complex and less teenage fiction… Still they are mine, they are my first creations, written in Greek on paper that by now has yellowed and creased and has been read hundreds of times. Inevitably, trying to acquire a sense of belonging, I fall back to my creations, I go back to familiar space, just like you would resort to your music. They are my safe space, the place I built in this world for me because this world didn’t have one reserved for me, or wasn’t willing to host my being. I belong there, to my stories, not here, and maybe that’s the problem. Children who grew up feeling unloved and unwanted open their hearts and look for alternative worlds in which they are important, cherished and protected. They grow up to be gifted individuals because to escape the outside, from a very early age they turn inside. Most of them, through the inside, they discover and open the door to the Other, they pierce the Veil and go to the Other side. These children are always with one foot here and one foot there, changelings that one side doesn’t want them and the other side can’t have them. They also bring gifts here, gifts from the Other side in the form of art and innate understanding. Outsiders, lost children, weirdoes, outcasts and social failures, forever struggling to fit in and make sense of this world. I am so tired of this world, tired of my legacy, tired trying to fit in. I read my old stories like a child would run to the cupboard and embrace the dress of its dead mother, trying to get a whiff of her scent, trying to feel her close, trying to feel loved and safe. That scent is getting less and less each year, until the child isn’t sure if they can indeed smell something or it’s a ghost, a comforting memory cause they have nothing else to hold on to. I feel like that child. I have no mother or father, no siblings, no-one. We’re all isolated in our bodies and our minds and we live separate existences, and then our paths cross with people we come to care about and then we’re alone again. We’re always and forever alone and that loneliness sometimes kills me. It’s like the cat you love so much and caress and keep close and sometimes that same animal turns and claws at your face for no reason. 

Don’t worry about me, I’ll keep going and keep trying. I miss you, I miss you so much though we haven’t met. I need you to be here. Please be here. Don’t go away and leave me, it would just make life even more unbearable. I care about you so much and I don’t even know how that happened. I really don’t, you sly, subtle Finnigami.

We’ll talk again soon, I’ll write you a normal letter.

I am sending you a chapter of my story. As I’ve said before, I don’t write something for someone, but I do write things because of someone or something. Can you guess who that piece refers to?"

Friendly conversation with a writer (with Thranduil's butt as a bonus)

Thranduil: Ass divine. Unlike our good ol' elven king, have one, don't BE one to your friends.

Source: http://ranlae.deviantart.com/art/mailea-kaila-556271990 

Me: "This pisses me off, you know? There is a friend of mine who has vanished for years now. And you do know how few my friends are. Every time he gets into a relationship, he drops off the face of the earth. Stops calling. Stops meeting with me. And it pisses me off when my friends do that. It makes me sad. Time passes and I may move abroad and never see him again. I am not expecting him to spend time daily or even weekly with me. But for the love of fuck, surely you can find some time once or twice a year for a fucking coffee with me?! I am not asking for the moon, I am asking for maybe two hours every few months!"

Lizbeth: "Let me quote Walter, the scientist, from the series Fringe: 'It's all because of that temptress. She tricked him with her carnal manipulations and he fell right into her vagenta!' (vagina+ agenta). Maybe his girlfriend isn't happy with him meeting his female friends, you know. Most women feel that way and they are VERY manipulative and cunning. They make sure to alienate their boyfriends from their female friends to eliminate possible competition. Men don't realise it until it's too late."

Me: *Laughs* "I don't know if he has realised we have not met each other for at least two, maybe three years now. Men are complete idiots. As soon as they find a relationship nothing else matters. They no longer have friends or other interests. There is the Holy Vagina, and then there is everything else: work, food, sleep and maybe something called hobbies, if her majesty the Vagina allows. These men find themselves alone in their fifties, married to what has become a fat, unpleasant woman, and they drink beer in front of the TV and wonder why they have no friends left. Because you ditched us years ago, you bloody morons, that's why!"

Lizbeth laughs. "You do remember what J. told you about it, don't you now?"

Me: "Yeah. J. said he has so many other, more serious problems in his life, that doesn't have any time or energy left to worry about those who never call and don't keep in touch because they developed a case of severe phone allergy doubled with Procrastinatis and Arseholery."

Lizbeth: "That's why I love that guy. He's right, you know."

Me: "Oh hell, fuck me, I know. That's why I stopped calling my friend and no longer try to reach him. He lives in a new house now, much closer to mine. If he can't be bothered to call and meet up, then to hell with him. I have other priorities too. I can't chase anyone. Let him go. Maybe someone else will replace him. It hurts, but you can't make people stay, you can't make them care or give you their time. Obviously my idea of our friendship was wildly exaggerated."

Lizbeth quotes Mark Twain: "As in 'the reports of my death have been wildly exaggerated'?"

Me: "Yeah. Something like that. How goes the review hunting, by the way?"

Lizbeth makes a face. "I've kissed so much arse in the past one month I am beginning to feel hairs growing on my poor chapped lips. You can't imagine how boring this procedure is. Some of the reviewers are rude, too!"

Me: "Well fuck them. Give them the finger if they are rude." *Raises her middle finger in solemn salutation*

Lizbeth: "You can't give them the finger, even if they are rude. Sure, I've said many 'fuck you too' to my screen whenever I receive a rude email. I don't mind a refusal. If they tell me they are busy and can't do another review, what am I going to do, kidnap them and force them to write reviews for my book? I just shrug and thank them anyway. But the rude ones, oh the rude ones are so much fun. I wish I become famous just so they regret being so unpleasant to me."

Me: "Don't worry about them. Fuck them. Your writing isn't for everyone. You know that, right?"

Lizbeth: "Nothing is for everyone. I just wish humans were less unpleasant to each other."

Me: "Isn't this what makes you write?"

Lizbeth: "Don't you go all Buddha on me now, about existence being painful and this pain being the grit that makes the pearl grow. Being polite is always an option, especially if the other person has been nothing but polite to you. Have an arsehole. Don't be one."

Me: "Yeah, fat chance of that, love. Mutation by proximity."

Lizbeth: "More like mutation by constant association with that orifice and thorough brain alienation."

Me: "I've got an 'alienation' label on my blog. Maybe I should use 'brain alienation' too."

Lizbeth: "Maybe we should stop caring about people who don't care about us in the same way."

Me: "How can you tell how much someone cares?"

Lizbeth: "Easy peasy. They check on you every now and then to make sure you are okay."

Me: "Aw man, I must delete almost my entire list of contacts if that's the case."

Lizbeth: "Don't delete them. Just stop worrying about them, stop calling them, and stop wondering why they don't call. You've got bigger fish to fry."

Me: "Yeah, my glorious self. I will be a feast." (I am Pisces with Pisces ascendant...)

Lizbeth: "Goodie. Am I invited?"

Me: "Of course. Come, eat, this is my body. But you will most likely start fancying elves and vampires and unpleasant characters afterwards."

Lizbeth: "I don't see any discernible difference. I do that already."

Me: "And here I was, wondering why we keep each other such good company..."

The rebels of my round merry arsehole

I catch myself running. I have to be smarter than the ones who chase me. It’s guerilla war. They never show their faces or true intentions. They hide behind the mask of acquaintances or friends.  They are the ‘oh poor me’ or the ‘I’ll criticize the most irrelevant things with a personal attack’ garden variety enemies. On their own they amount to shit, but they represent dogma, fear, self-righteousness. They are the vessels for the Powers That Be. I smile, nod, run. Don’t look back. Don’t answer.  Just flee, dodge, laugh, put on some fantastic music. Don’t even bother.

These ‘lovely’ chaps are dangerous in only one way. If you don’t see them for what they are and you let them in your life and secrets, you are in trouble. Their beady rat eyes observe everything and evaluate everything. Because thinking is hard, they judge*, and everything that does not fit their idea of acceptable is immediately a reason to tell you their opinion. They are not jealous, but envious. They began their lives as rebels, but lacking the guts to back their convictions, they gave up. They occupy a couch, shoot opinions on everything (especially matters related to your life and choices) and shake their heads on how you can possibly be so gullible and immature. Or they have always been underdogs. Woe is me. Please pity me, oh poor me. Pity pity pity. Hard titty said the kitty. Eat my panties.

I sometimes wish I could tell them my opinion without any censorship. However, this is what they do, and come on now, I’d never do that. Besides I am not here to tell anyone my opinion on anything. If they can’t see they are being assholes, who am I to enlighten them? My job here is to fantasise about my glorious hero Nuare spending hours pleasing my gorgeous hero Nemeryl. Or the Archduke of Vantir, Aristius, paying homage with his lips to the flesh of his stunning L’etilian slave and-king-to- be, Liland. My job is to watch good series, movies, read engrossing books. I live to serve myself and my own pleasure on all levels, and be kind to those who love me, and not behead those lacking the good taste to do so. My cats worship me. If cats worship me all humans should stand in awe of my personal achievement. Bwa ha ha!

Other than that, I have editing to do. So long, and thanks for all the pageviews. :P

*Carl Jung said that.

Some thoughts on this blog.

1. In a few months from now (October), it will be 10 years since I created it. Imagine that. Ten whole years of me banging the keyboard like a manic orangutan.
2. I changed the font size of the entire blog, including past posts, to make it easier to read. I hope this is indeed the case.
3. I love this blog. It is surreal and profane and sad, just like its creator. It is also honest, and not mundane to the degree I could help it. I am responsible for it and it has grown into something important.
4. I don't advertise it and yet it seems that it has its own bizarre readership, at least judging from the number of page views and flags. Which is great, I am not complaining. But weird. I wonder who those people are and what they are trying to achieve by reading my inane musings and my rants. Oh well, pointless to wonder. Thank you for reading it anyway.
5. I am thinking about organising a small 'thank you' giveaway of some kind on the anniversary of its creation. Then again, I may by that time be in Australia, or dead. Or both.

It's very late. I should be sleeping, especially considering how late I slept yesterday. I just 'love' my insomnia bouts; nothing better than lying in bed jumping out of your skin at every single noise. Presently I am eating strawberries and seriously considering writing an article for a newspaper. I have no idea if they will accept it or not, but if this happens, I will let you know.

Catch 22

I love writing. I swear I do. But there are times I stare at the screen and want to break it. I feel beyond tired, beyond exhausted, beyond empty. 

What gives value to our efforts is time. The more time you spend on an activity, the more important it becomes for you. The reason you hate giving up on a person or activity you've spent years on is exactly that; time. Time is what validates everything, and it cannot be replaced, influenced, bought or brought back. It's the coin we give in exchange for meaning, the one parameter that cannot be omitted in the equation of understanding. It's the funniest thing; every passing moment brings more meaning to our life while making it smaller by that same amount of time. 

Time passes, inevitably, inexorably, mercilessly. The same eyes that stared at me in the mirror years ago stare back at me now, and yet I am not the same person. The only thing that authenticates our existence, makes us mature, that may even make us happy, is the thing that kills us. So I suppose what we should do is use it wisely. Choose what to do with the time we have at our disposal.

There is enough time for everything.

Everything happens in the right time.

So billions of people before me thought, and so billions of people after me will think. 

That they have time.

Oh, I know, I know, I am becoming obsessive; I am losing sight of the bigger picture. There is happiness out there too. Love, friendship, hobbies, art, so many sources of joy, so many distractions. Right now I could be out, seeking love, or friendship, or cheap thrills of any kind. Most of the time this translates as discussing existential questions with people who don't understand what it means to exist. It's so much fun. I see through all. I see their despair, their need to be loved, and the wrong ways they try to achieve it. I see through humans. I see through them and they are dirty, they are desperate, they are petty and disgusting. Then I feel pity for them, and for the human race as a whole, and I include myself in it. I see the very foundations of their misconceptions, the roots of their deprivation, and I still manage to feel pity because I know what they crave is love. They crave what they never had, or what they had a twisted ghost of. And so they make the same mistakes again and again and marvel at the fact the result is the same, they marvel at the fact they get hurt again and again. And one day, there is no more time to make the same mistakes. As Buddha said, the problem is, you think you have time. You don't. You fucking don't.

I am a hermit by choice, voicing out my deepest thoughts and needs to those few ones I know won't hurt me. They won't judge me for how weak or silly I may be, the same way I won't pass judgement on the rest of humanity for how silly and petty and desperate they are. I am spending my days and nights in front of a screen, working on a book, making it better, trimming it, polishing it, making it as good as I can. I could be out, talking to others, listening to the same questions and the same answers for the umpteenth time. I choose not to. I choose to walk the streets alone at dusk, talking to flowers and trees instead of humans, listening to music or the breeze or the chatter of birds instead of my own kind. Because I know my own kind cannot give me answers. The only answer is found in the silent toil in front of a screen, rewriting, erasing, perfecting what I have created. 

 

I don’t expect fame, or money, or even understanding. There is a story that needs to be told, it demands to be released out there. I struggle with so many demons to make that happen. I struggle with boredom, CVs, tiredness, headache, a language that’s not my mother tongue, distractions, and you wouldn’t have guessed it; time. I struggle with all those demons inside and outside and word by word I carve my way, sweating with the effort, cursing, despairing, straining like I am carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. I write and erase and re-read and re-write and ache, literally ache with how long it takes, and how that time will never be returned to me, and it will be what makes this book important. It’s the one parameter that gives it meaning. It’s the payment I have to make to make it work. A part of my life, countless hours, days, months spent on it, and looking back I don’t regret a single moment. I just wonder what kind of life this is, and what it offers.

I don’t write to be loved or get laid. I write because there is no other way I’d rather spend that time. There is nothing else I love more in order to devote that time to that person or activity. I know that once the book is out some will love me for it, and some will hate me for it. It makes no difference. They do not know how many nightfalls found me struggling over a keyboard, how many dawns found me re-reading the same text with aching eyes. They cannot comprehend the happiness I experienced while I watched it take form bit by bit. They can’t understand the frustration I had to overcome, the resolve I had to show, the pain of not finding the right word or the next occurrence. They can’t guess how many days and nights I spent walking empty streets and listening to music in order to untangle a part of the plot. They can’t possibly know I chose that over going out and meeting with friends, or seeking love. And all these facts are also the reasons they can’t take it from me. They can’t make me regret, or change my mind, or doubt whether I spent my time wisely. No-one can make me hate it or disregard it. I know what I did. I know why I did it; because nothing else would have made me happier. That’s why. And the reason I wrote it like I did is because I, and not someone else, wrote it.

Next time you read a book, remember you are bearing witness to how a part of someone’s life was spent. I wish you to be lucky enough to come across those books that were written because the writer loved them so much they wouldn’t have spend that time in a different way. I wish you to find those books that they’re not the voice of the writer, but all those voices of dusks walked in silence, and dawns that arrived without any sleep. I wish you to find those books the writer had no choice but to complete, or go crazy with the voices inside their head. 

I hope my book will be one of them. I hope my book will be as deep and as quenching for your thirst as it was for mine.

Time, time, time.

Will I ever find the one who will make me forget about writing for a while?

Where are you?

Maybe you’ll show up in due time.

Time. Ha ha ha.

God/dess, I am so tired. But there is writing to be done.

Goodnight.

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